Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Audiobook #10 - Old School

Diary of a wimpy kid old school by jeff, kinney, read by ramon diocampo september saturday. Grown-Ups are always talking about the good old days and how things were so much better when they were kids, but i think they're just jealous, because my generation has all this fancy technology and stuff they didn't have growing up. Believe me, i'm sure when i have kids of my own, i'm gon na be the exact same way my parents are now when i was your age, we used our legs for getting around yeah, whatever pops they'll reply, as they jet pack around the living room. Mom'S always saying that when she was younger, it was great because everybody in town knew everybody else and it was like one giant family, but that doesn't sound so great to me. I, like my privacy, and i really don't need everyone. Knowing my personal business mom says the problem with society these days is that everybody's got their nose in a screen and nobody takes the time to get to know the people who live around them. I don't really see eye to eye with mom on that issue, though personally, i think a little separation is a good thing. Lately, mom's been going around town with a petition to get people to stop using their phones and electronic gadgets for 48 hours. Let'S unplug to reconnect electronics are cluttering our lives, let's put down our devices for a weekend and get to know one another. Who'S in mom needs a hundred signatures before she can take the petition to town hall but she's having trouble getting people to put their names on it. I'M just hoping she gives up on this idea soon, because it's kind of exhausting for the rest of us to pretend we don't know her. I really don't understand why mom thinks we need to go backward anyway from what i can tell the old days, weren't that much fun. If you think about it, you never see anyone in those black and white photos smiling in the old days. People were just a whole lot tougher than they are today, but human beings have evolved, and now we need things like electric toothbrushes and shopping malls and soft-serve ice cream to survive. I bet our ancestors would be pretty disappointed with the way we turned out, but once somebody invented air conditioning there really was no turning back. We'Ve gotten so spoiled that pretty soon we won't even have to leave our homes. If we don't want to, everything will be delivered by drones. In fact, the way we're headed i'll bet a thousand years from now human beings won't even have spines. Some people complain that all this technology has made us soft. But if you ask me, that's not necessarily a bad thing: there are all sorts of luxuries nowadays that make people's lives better. Take baby wipes, for example, people were using regular toilet paper for hundreds of years and then all of a sudden, some genius came up with an idea that was a total game changer. What really amazes me is that it took so long for people to come up with the idea. I seriously can't believe the guy who invented the light bulb didn't see baby wipes coming and who knows what crazy things someone's going to come up with next to make our lives easier whatever? It is, though, i'll be the first in line to buy it, but if mom had her way, we'd be living like people did before. There were computers and cell phones and baby wipes, and i really don't want to imagine living in a world without baby wipes sunday. Dad says that when he was growing up in the summertime, kids played outside all day until they got called home for dinner at night. Well, that's pretty much the opposite of the way. My summer went this year i spent july and august at film camp, where all i did was watch movies in an air-conditioned theater for eight hours a day. The main reason i signed up for film camp was because i thought it was for people who are serious about movies like me, but i found out. It was really just a place where parents could dump their kids off for some cheap babysitting. The downside of spending that much time in a dark theater is that, at the end of the day, it took a half hour for my eyes to adjust to the sunlight. The other reason i signed up for film camp was to get out of the house ever since we got a pet pig, it hasn't been a lot of fun being home, especially not a dinner for the record. I think it's a terrible idea, letting the pig eat at the table because it already thinks it's a human being, and the last thing we need is for it to think it's on equal footing with the rest of us right after we got the pig mom thought It would be fun to teach it some tricks, so she would give the pig a cookie when it stood on its hind legs, but the pig learned to walk like that, and it hasn't been on all fours ever since to make matters worse. My little brother manny put a pair of his shorts on the pig. So now it's like we're living in the house with a disney character, mom used to take the pig outside, but after it started walking upright it decided it was too good for its leash. Mom was worried that if the pig ran off we'd never find it so she got a caller with one of those gps tracking chips in it. But every time mom put the collar on the pig within five minutes. It would be back off and don't even ask me how the pig did that since pigs don't even have thumbs so now the pig just comes and goes as it pleases and who knows where it spends its time. What really stinks is that i have a curfew, but the pig doesn't, i think, giving the pig too many privileges is a really bad idea. One day, pigs will rule the world and it'll be my family's fault for starting it all. I wouldn't really have an issue with the pig if it didn't interfere with my life, but i was late on the first day of school because it was hogging the bathroom with a pig in the house. I was actually looking forward to school starting, but once i got there, i realized it was just the same old thing and, to be honest with you, i feel like i've been in middle school forever. I needed to mix things up a little or i was going to go crazy. So, in the first week of school, i volunteered for the homework buddies program, be a buddy team up with an elementary school kid to lend a hand sign up for homework buddies today. But the main reason i signed up was so i could skip third period, which is music class with mrs graziano. To give you an idea of how long mrs graziano has been the music teacher dad had her when he was my age and apparently spending 30 years teaching middle schoolers how to play musical instruments does something to a person. Last week i met my homework buddy. This kid named through. I have no idea why he even signed up for the program, though, because he's one of those people who reads scientific journals and college textbooks for fun. The first time we got together through showed me his homework, which was some coloring and a word find through said. He didn't need any help and then he asked to see my homework. I had at least an hour of math problems and a geography assignment that would have taken me another two hours, but through whipped through all of it in about 15 minutes, and he wasn't just fast. He was good. I turned in the assignments the next day and when i got them back from my teachers, i had perfect scores at first. I felt a little bad about getting help from a third grader, but then i realized that homework buddies are supposed to help each other out. So now, whenever me and fru get together, i just hand him a pile of assignments and let him do his thing. The way i see it, this is working out for everyone. My only complaint about fru is that sometimes he's too helpful he's been getting bored with. My homework so he started making up assignments to challenge himself. The other day he wrote a paper and attached it to my regular homework for extra credit, but luckily i checked it over before handing it in detecting commutative permeability in physics he had signed it by through. Instead of by greg heffley for a while, i was just glad to be getting some homework help, but recently i've been thinking that since i'm, the one who discovered fru, i deserve some kind of credit. If he goes on to do big things like win all that money, that comes with a nobel prize wednesday, as if our house wasn't crowded enough now grandpa is living with us. They raised the rent at leisure towers and he couldn't afford to live there anymore. So mom invited grandpa to move in with our family dad wasn't so hot on the idea. Even though grandpa is his own father, but mom says it will be just like the old days when three generations lived under the same roof. I think mom has this rosy image of the way things used to be, but i have a totally different picture of what it must have been like back. Then i was actually okay with grandpa moving in with us until i realized what it meant for me, mom. Let grandpa pick any bedroom he wanted and, of course he chose mine. That meant i needed to find a new place to sleep. My first thought was to go to the guest room, but i forgot that's where the pig stays and there's no way, i'm sharing the pull out couch with a barn animal. I ruled out rodrick's room right away because he might actually be a step down from the pig. My only other choice was to room with manny, so i got out the air bed and set it up on his floor. But sleeping in manny's room has its own problems: mom reads: manny a bedtime story, every night and sometimes they're really long. In fact, lately i think manny's been picking out the thickest books he can find just to get on my nerves. Things have been a little tense ever since grandpa moved in you can tell he doesn't really approve of the way. Mom and dad are raising us kids, even though he never actually comes out and says it. Mom'S been trying to potty train manny forever and she's experimenting with something called no pants after dinner, and it's exactly what it sounds like what's supposed to happen is that when manny feels the urge to go, he'll run to the bathroom but manny just prances around all Night with nothing on below the waist, and eventually he ducks behind the recliner in the family room to do his business. I don't think dad's a huge fan of no pants after dinner, but i can tell he's even more uncomfortable with grandpa being here to witness it. It'S pretty obvious, having grandpa around is really stressing dad out and every time one of us kids screws up. It just makes dad even more tense. What seems to annoy dad the most is when one of us kids asks mom to do something that we should be able to do ourselves. Yesterday i asked mom to open a microwave burrito for me because i always have trouble with those plastic packages but dad jumped all over my case. He said if i was stranded on a desert island with a thousand microwave burritos i'd starve to death, because i couldn't figure out how to open them. On my own, i told dad that the chances of me getting stranded on a desert island with a thousand microwave burritos were pretty slim, but he said i was missing the point he said. If i don't learn how to do things by myself, i'm not going to be able to survive in the real world. Another thing dad hates is how mom still helps me get ready for school in the morning. She picks up my clothes the night before and she has a chart hanging in the kitchen to help me stay on track. I guess dad was pretty embarrassed by the chart because the other day he took it down, but without that thing to guide me through the morning, i got the order of things all wrong and ended up wearing socks over my shoes. These days, i think dad's just waiting for me to screw up this morning. I forgot to put the cap back on the tube of toothpaste and dad was ready to pounce. I didn't think it was a big deal, but dad gave me this long speech about how little things have big consequences. He said if i was a kid growing up in frontier times, and it was my job to tighten the bolts and the wagon wheels, but i forgot to then the wheels would fall off and our family would get eaten by wolves. I thought dad was being kind of dramatic, but it did make me feel a little guilty about that. Toothpaste cap, i'm not the only one who's been getting on dad's nerves, though lately roderick's been getting under dad's skin too. Whenever roderick needs gas for his van, he hits mom up for money, but a few nights ago he made the mistake of doing it in front of grandpa. Dad said that from now on, roderick has to pay for his own gas and when roderick asked how he was supposed to do that. Dad said it was time for him to get a job, so mom helped roderick go through the help wanted section of the newspaper to find him a job that doesn't require any skills or experience. They finally found an ad for a restaurant. That'S about 15 minutes from our house. The ad read wanted seeking motivated individuals to join the team at the old timey ice cream, parlor old, timey, tobias. I went to the old timey ice cream parlor for rowley's last birthday party and that experience may have permanently ruined ice cream. For me, they have this one dessert on the menu called the feeding trough, which is 40 scoops of ice cream. All in one long tray and when you mix different flavors of ice cream together, it just turns into gray slop the old timey ice cream. Parlor is one of those places where the whole staff comes to your table to sing for your birthday. That makes me really uncomfortable because it's pretty obvious they'd rather be doing anything else. It'S your birthday and we're here to say. We hope your day is dandy in an old-fashioned way. Rodrick had an interview at the restaurant earlier in the week and believe it or not. He got the job. Saturday was his first night of work and mom thought it would be a good idea for the rest of us to surprise roderick and cheer him on. But when we got to the restaurant we couldn't find him anywhere. Mom was pretty worried, but eventually we found him out back tossing garbage in the dumpster. Mom wasn't happy that roderick was on trash duty and she gave the manager a piece of her mind. But the manager said roderick was an entry-level employee and that everyone who works at the restaurant has to pay their dues. I'M pretty sure. Roderick was hoping we'd all just go home and leave him alone after that, but mom wanted to stick around and when rodrick went on his 15-minute break, we hung out with him in the employee, lounge roderick spent the rest of the night, taking the trash from the Kitchen out to the dumpster - and i guess mom - wanted to see him one more time before we left so she told our waiter. It was manny's birthday and the waiter called the whole staff to our table. But i wish mom didn't go and do that because there's something about the smell of garbage juice, that really ruins your appetite. The singing didn't help either and if you're feeling hungry or at the perfect place now just blow out that candle. So you can stuff your face. Monday. Lately mom's been trying to get grandpa to tell us kids about what life was like when he was growing up. Grandpa says that when he was young they didn't have televisions or anything like that. So kids spent most of their time outdoors playing games like kick, the can grown-ups are always talking about playing kick the can one time me and rowley actually gave it a try to see what the big deal was, but we quit. After about 30 seconds, we went inside and played twisted wizard. Instead, dad says when he was a kid he and his best friend giles would just use their imaginations and play all day in the woods. Well me and rowley tried using our imaginations once, but rowley's dad put an end to it before we could even get going dad said today's parents are overprotective and that when he was a kid, he and giles roamed free and never even bothered to tell their parents Where they were going, but mom said it was a lot safer back in those days and now it's too dangerous for kids to be off on their own without adult supervision. Dad said that might be true, but kids like me and rowley need to learn how to protect ourselves. Dad said when he was in middle school, he and giles buried stuff all over town, so that if they ever got cornered, they could fight their way out. But grandpa had a different version of things. He said dad and giles raided the kitchen drawer for silverware and that's what they stashed all over the neighborhood when dad's mother realized her forks and knives were missing. She made the boys, dig them all up and bring them back after that. Dad and giles got their hands on some plastic utensils, but they got into an argument over whether or not a spork could be used for self-defense and things turned ugly giles told his mother. What dad did and showed her the spork marks on his rear end to prove it? I guess those must have been different times, because giles's mom bent dad over her knee and spanked him see that's the problem with putting too much stock in the old days. You remember all the good stuff, but you forget about the time you got spanked by your best friend's mom wednesday. I guess i thought grandpa would live with us for a little while and then find a place that was cheaper than leisure towers. But now i'm starting to worry that it's permanent and that's not a good thing, because i'm not sure how much longer i can be. Manny'S roommate, for one thing: it's not dignified to share a room with a person who doesn't wear pants after dinner and grandpa's, almost just as bad when he moved out of leisure towers. His girlfriend darlene broke up with him. Lately he's been moping around the house in a bathrobe, which means i can't really have friends over. I figure the sooner grandpa's back in the game. The sooner he moves out, so i've been showing grandpa how to do online dating to help him break out of his funk. I think i've created a monster, though now grandpa's on the computer 24 hours a day and he's got at least 50 relationships going simultaneously. Don'T even ask me how he keeps track of who's, who belinda has sent you a wink. Bethany would like to meet you martha likes your profile picture. Tiffany has sent you a poke sylvie likes, your knock, knock joke marjorie thinks you are nice. Things are starting to turn around for roderick too. He told mom. He got a promotion at work. So, of course, tonight we had to pile into the car to go. Show him our support, i'm not sure. If i'd call rodrik's new position, a promotion, though they've got him dressing up as old-timey tobias, the restaurant's mascot, apparently the guy, who had the job last got fired for being seen without his head on and i'm guessing when it comes to mascots. That'S a huge no-no. Old-Timey, tobias is supposed to walk around the restaurant and go from table to table making little kids happy, but as far as i can tell, he has the opposite effect. In fact, kids seem to really hate old-timey tobias. When we got there tonight, roderick was getting food thrown at him from every direction. Roderick told mom that his manager warned him if he was ever caught without his tobias head on he'd be fired on the spot. Luckily, one of the eyes on the costume's head comes out, which is the only way roderick was able to stay hydrated mom poked, a straw through the empty eye, socket i'm starting to wonder if the guy, who had the job dressing up as old, timey, tobias got Fired on purpose, if i had to bet on how long roderick lasts i'd, give him two weeks tops friday. All the buzz at school has been about this big trip to hard scrapple farms. That'S coming up next month, when you get to my grade, the whole class goes on a week-long trip to this place, where you sleep in log cabins and learn about nature and hard work. I'M sure it's a blast if you're into that sort of thing, but i've already decided i'm going to be the one kid who stays back when everybody else heads off on the trip and while the rest of my classmates are sweating it out in the woods i'll, Be in the school library enjoying all the comforts of the modern world, including air conditioning mom's, been trying to get me to change my mind because she thinks i'll regret not going. I really doubt that's gon na happen, though. I'Ve heard horror stories from kids who went away to hard scrabble farms, and i remember the letters roderick sent home when he went there. All of them said help help get me out of here. In fact, roderick seemed kind of traumatized by the whole experience when he got back from the trip he crawled into bed and stayed there for an entire weekend. Today was the deadline for picking who you wanted to room with, and at lunch everyone was scrambling to get into a good cabin. I was glad i already decided i wasn't going because i really didn't want to deal with all that drama. I felt a little bad for rowley because he was counting on bunking with me. When i told him i wasn't going on the trip he went around, seeing if anyone had an opening in their cabin but by the end of the lunch period, things weren't looking good for him. I can't really worry about rowley, though, because i've got my own problems to deal with monday mom and dad got a letter from the school saying they had to come in for a special parent teacher conference. I'Ve been worried sick all week, because i thought i must have forgotten to cross through's name off of one of my homework assignments and i was in trouble, but that wasn't it at all the reason the school asked mom and dad to come in was to tell Them that my homework grades have improved so much they're, putting me in harder classes. Well, i'm sure froo will appreciate having more challenging homework, but he can't be there to help me during tests. So unless i can figure out a way to sneak him into school, i'm never gon na pass. When mom and dad came home from the parent teacher conference, mom said we needed to celebrate the good news. Of course, that meant going to the old timey ice cream. Parlor i was getting a little sick of spending every night at roderick's work and i think grandpa was feeling the same way. He told mom ice cream makes his gums hurt and he was going to stay home this time around. I tried using the same excuse, but mom was dead, set on us going when we got to the restaurant, though roderick was nowhere to be found. The manager told mom that roderick never showed up for work that sent mom into a panic, and we got back in the van to go. Look for him. We drove all over the place and we finally found roderick walking along the side of the highway. When we pulled over roderick got in the van and explained what happened, he said there was a traffic jam on the highway and he was going to be late for work. So he got into the carpool lane where he could go a lot faster, but the rule for the carpool lane is that you have to have at least two people in your vehicle. So roderick made it look like old, timey. Tobias was sitting next to him in the passenger seat. Unfortunately, some eagle-eyed cop pulled him over the cop wasn't amused and gave rodrick a ticket for 100. Then he found all sorts of things wrong with the van like a broken taillight and an expired inspection sticker. After that, the cop had roderick's van towed and left him stranded on the side of the road. So roderick was a huge target for all the kids who were stuck in the traffic jam. Mom told dad to drive home, so she could throw roderick's costume in the washing machine. But when we got to our street there were cars parked up and down on both sides. There were even cars parked on our lawn, which was pretty strange. We had to park the van at the bottom of the hill and walk up the street when we finally got to our yard. You could hear loud, music coming from the house and when we opened the front door there was a raging party going on inside and lots of senior citizens doing the twist we had to push through the crowd to find grandpa who was out back in our old Hot tub, with three old ladies and the pig and from the look of things he was having the time of his life dad kicked everyone out of the house which took forever mostly because no one was in a big hurry to leave when everyone was gone. Dad lit into grandpa for having a party grandpa said he didn't plan on having a party. He said he tried to invite one lady from his dating site over to watch a movie, but he must have accidentally hit, send all, and then everyone showed up at once was really mad, but it must have been awkward for him to come up with a punishment For his own father, i guess he couldn't think of anything better, so he just put grandpa in timeout. I wish he had done a better job of clearing out the party guests. When we got home, though, because there were a few stragglers in manny's closet who didn't poke their heads out until they thought the coast was clear right as manny, and i were crawling into our beds for the night tuesday ever since grandpa had his party dad hasn't Been willing to leave him home alone and when dad can't be there to watch him, he makes one of us do it grandpa supposed to sit in timeout for an hour a day to work off his punishment, but he likes to do that in front of the Television, instead of in the corner, so if you're on grandpa duty, you have to watch whatever he wants to watch, but during the school day grandpa is home alone and i think dad's nervous, there's going to be another party, so he went out and bought one of Those webcams to make sure there isn't any funny business going on while he's at work. I don't know where he put it exactly, but what i do know is that he's not just using it to keep an eye on grandpa the other day. He called me from work to tell me to keep my feet off the coffee table, i'm all for technology, but not when it's used against me. I don't like having a camera in the house because nowadays there are cameras everywhere, you turn and if you ever do something embarrassing like pick your nose in a public place, trust me it's gon na get recorded, but the worst thing is cell phone cameras because nowadays, Everybody'S got one last summer when i was getting out of the town pool, my bathing suit fell down a little, and everyone saw it happen and before i even dried off, the pictures were posted all over the internet. Carla saw this at the pool today. 24 likes nancy. This kid really cracked me up uh days. You can even get in trouble for taking a picture of yourself. A few months ago we went to brunch after church and when we left the restaurant i felt like i might have spinach in my teeth. I wasn't anywhere near a mirror, so i borrowed mom's cell phone to take a picture of myself just to make sure. But some lady in front of me thought i was taking a photo of her and she wouldn't let us leave until she looked through the pictures on mom's phone to make sure i hadn't now that i think of it. That might have been what started mom on this electronics-free idea to begin with, speaking of which mom got all the signatures she needed to take her petition to town hall. The way she got them was by intercepting all the party-goers as they were, leaving our house. The other night, those old ladies signed right up after mom, took the petition to town hall. The leaders had a vote and made it official, so this saturday, the whole town is going to voluntarily unplug for the weekend. Moms made it her mission to get the word out to as many people as possible, i'm trying to keep a low profile until this whole thing is over, but mom hasn't been making it easy. I think cutting ourselves off from the outside world is a bad idea. If there's a zombie apocalypse or something big like that, we're gon na be the last ones to know friday as part of this electronics-free weekend, everyone's supposed to come down to the town park tomorrow for a voluntary cleanup. But it's going to take a lot more than one afternoon to make a dent in that mess. These days the parks look like something out of a movie where there's been a nuclear war. The park used to be nice, but things went downhill when the town ran out of money. The main reason was because they voted to build a one-way cell phone, only path through the park. Since half the time, people on the regular path, weren't watching where they were going, so all the money that was supposed to go to regular cleanup, went to this new path for people who wanted to use their electronic devices while they walked. But the project got too expensive and they had to cancel it before they finished the footbridge over the creek and since nobody on the path watches where they're going lots of people and their devices wound up, walking right off the footbridge and into the creek. The park got really run down after that and family stopped coming once teenagers took over. So if the people organizing this cleanup are smart, the first thing they'll do is find an exterminator that specializes in teenagers saturday. I have no idea what time i woke up this morning, because the clock on manny's dresser was unplugged. In fact, everything in the house was unplugged, which goes to show that mom was taking this electronics free thing pretty literally. The next thing i noticed was that there were a lot of people out walking in the neighborhood, so i guess everyone had decided to get into the old time spirit. I was planning on just relaxing and reading comic books on the couch all day, but dad said i should take advantage of all the foot traffic. He said when he was a kid he and giles opened a lemonade stand and earned enough money to buy them. Each a new skateboard, i said i thought a lemonade stand - was a great idea. Dad surprised me by handing over twenty dollars in seed money to help me get started. I knew i was gon na need a business partner, so i called rowley and told him to come down. I figured we'd get going by looking up the recipe for lemonade on the internet, but mom had hidden the power cord to the computer. I was a little embarrassed to ask dad so me and rowley decided to wing it. I knew we'd need lemons for sure, so we rode our bikes down to the convenience store and bought out their whole supply. When we got back home, we didn't know the exact number of lemons to put in the picture, so we went on the high side just to be safe and filled the whole picture with lemons. I was pretty sure the only other ingredient for lemonade besides water is sugar, but we didn't know how much of that we were supposed to use either, so we just eyeballed it and emptied most of the sugar bag into the pitcher. I thought, after that we were pretty much good to go, but then dad came downstairs saw what we were doing and told us. We got it all wrong. Dad said that, first of all, the green lemons we bought were actually limes, so we had to get rid of those. Then he said that to make lemonade, we needed to cut the lemons in half and squeeze them into the water, which would have been nice to know at the beginning. But rowley was too scared to cut the lemons because he said they'd make his eyes water. I told him he was getting lemons confused with onions. He wasn't budging, though, and i knew i had to do something about it or he wouldn't help out. So i dug around in the garage until i found a mask rally could cover his eyes with all. I could find was a scuba mask with a snorkel on the side, but rowley didn't seem to mind once rowley calmed down. We started cutting the lemons, which was a lot harder than i thought it would be. When i sliced into the first lemon, i got a shot of juice right in my eye. Ah, it stung like crazy and i could barely see rowley took the snorkel out of his mouth and started in with a hole. I told you so stuff, but i didn't want to hear it after i got my vision back. We squeezed all of our lemons into the water and set up our stand on the sidewalk a few people stopped by, but it was just to criticize everything we were doing. One lady told us we needed to stir the lemonade to mix the sugar in better. So i used rowley snorkel to blend the lemonade and sugar, but even after we did that she wouldn't make a purchase. Another guy who tasted our lemonade complained that it was too sweet. The next few people said the same thing, so i dumped out half the pitcher and added more water, but people didn't like that. I filled the pitcher with water from the hose one guy had a problem with the fact that we were using the same glass for every customer, even though i explained to him that we were rinsing it out after every use. We got tired of sitting out in the hot sun and decided our lemonade stand would work just as well as a self-serve business, so we put out a jar where people could pay for what they drink, but the second you set up an honor system. Somebody'S got, ta, go and ruin it for everyone and sure enough. We got ripped off, we realized, we were just gon na have to suck it up and man. The lemonade stand full time. So we got another glass from the kitchen cabinet and headed back outside. I started to notice that the people walking up the hill looked a lot thirstier than the people walking down it. So we posted a new pricing policy to take full advantage: downhill 50 cents, a glass uphill one dollar, a glass. A couple of people thought our jar was for tips and they dropped in some loose change. After that we started pushing the tips, because any money we brought in that way was one hundred percent profit. I was starting to feel good about things until a kid named. Cedric cunningham set up his own lemonade, stand a few houses down and it was pretty obvious. He had help from his parents because his stand was so fancy it made ours. Look like a joke see. This is the problem when you have an original idea. Five seconds later, you've got a million copycats. I'M a professional though, and i wasn't gon na - take a little competition personally, so i offered cedric two bucks to take his lemonade stand down and he agreed to it, but a minute later he set up his stand again. This time directly across the street from us, i was getting pretty annoyed because we were running out of lemonade and i knew dad wasn't going to give us any more money for ingredients. That'S when i realized. If we sold water instead of lemonade, we would save ourselves a lot of hassle, plus it was pretty obvious. Cedric had cornered the lemonade market, especially after he put up his new sign help me buy medicine for my sick kitty, but i knew if we were gon na sell water. It would have to seem extra special to get people to pay for it. So i came up with an awesome sounding name, and then i filled manny's baby pool with water, so we wouldn't run out for a while nrg fitness water. If we were gon na call this stuff fitness water we'd have to let people know it actually worked. So i had rowley do some jumping jacks and push-ups in front of our stand. The problem is, rowley is not in the best shape, so it was a bad luck for our company. Luckily, a guy who was actually in shape came up the hill right after that, and i offered to pay him a few bucks if he told everyone he got that way by drinking our nrg fitness water. But i guess he had better things to do because he told us he wasn't interested. Unfortunately, a guy walking down the hill overheard us and he said he'd be happy to endorse our product, not to be mean or anything, but this guy definitely did not have the look we were after so to make him go away. I paid him three bucks to tell people he didn't drink our stuff. I realized we were still competing for beverage dollars with a kid across the street and that if we were going to make any real money, we needed to move our operation to a whole new market, and i knew just the place. The town park with the big cleanup going on down there i figured there would be a ton of thirsty volunteers, so me and rowley loaded up a wagon with as much of our product as we could carry and headed down the hill. Halfway to the park. Rowley said he was dehydrated and needed a drink. I didn't want to stop, but he looked like he was going to pass out. So i let him take a bottle and made a note to dock his pay later. When we got down to the park it seemed like the whole town was there, everyone was working really hard and it was pretty hot out. As a bonus. The water fountain was broken, which meant people didn't have any real options for quenching their thirst. So me and rowley knew we were gon na make a killing selling our stuff. Unfortunately, mom spotted us right away and asked what we were up to. I told her. We were going to sell our fitness water to anyone who was willing to shell out a few bucks, but mom said it was tacky to profit off a bunch of volunteers who were sacrificing their saturday to clean up the park. I told her: everybody who drank our water would be able to volunteer twice as hard and the whole cleanup would go. A lot quicker while me and mom were arguing about this. The ladies who were working on the flower bed totally raided our supplies and before we could do anything about it, they had poured our whole inventory of fitness water into their new garden, like it was just some cheap junk. I did a quick calculation and figured that was at least two hundred dollars in lost profits seeping into the ground, but those ladies just went right back to their planting, like it was no big deal still. It wasn't too late for me and rowley to turn this thing around. We gathered up the empty bottles and headed down to the creek for a refill mom stepped in our way. She told me and rowley. She wanted us to help the volunteers with the cleanup and handed us some lawn tools to get started. I explained that we were businessmen and real businessmen. Don'T work for free, but before i was even done talking rowley was on his hands and knees planting perennials. I knew i had to get out of there as quickly as possible or i'd get roped in too, but mom was one step ahead of me. She said when i was little she used to take me to the park every day and that those were her most special memories of the two of us. She told me if we didn't clean the park, other moms wouldn't be able to have the same kinds of precious moments with their kids, see. Mom knows exactly how to get to me and that's the reason i found myself raking leaves for free instead of making a truckload of money. The rake mom gave me was a piece of junk, though, but when i asked for a new one, she said everybody was doing their best with what they had. It took me a half hour to scrape together a measly pile of leaves and then a bunch of little kids came tearing through it and undid all my hard work. Don'T ask me why people brought their little kids to the park cleanup because they were no help at all. In fact, they were constantly getting into trouble at one point. A bunch of them were playing in a pile of fertilizer and someone had to chase them out of there. The whole park clean up effort was totally disorganized. Nobody was really in charge, so it was just complete chaos. Things got even crazier when the community service bus pulled into the parking lot and a bunch of teenagers and orange jumpsuits filed out. Apparently, these guys were bused in to serve their punishment for committing crimes like shoplifting and vandalism. And if i had to guess i'd say a few of them were directly responsible for the graffiti on the playground equipment. The community service guys were more interested in goofing off than pitching in and some of the stuff they were doing with the rakes and shovels was downright dangerous, but right when it seemed like it couldn't get any worse. A bunch of vans rolled into the parking lot and an entire girl scout troop poured out of the vehicles and it looked like they meant business within 10 minutes. They had organized everyone at the park cleanup into separate teams with a girl scout in charge of each one. My team was responsible for raking leaves in the playground area, and the girl in charge of my group was a brownie. It was a little embarrassing, but, to be honest with you, i was happy. The girl scouts came in and whipped everybody into shape. Every time i've seen the girl scouts get involved with a project. I'Ve been impressed a few months ago. The town wanted to build a community garden, but nobody could get their act together and the project fizzled out, but then the girl scouts swooped in and built the whole thing on a sunday afternoon. I'Ll tell you this. If you put a group of boys, my age in charge of something like that, nothing good would come of it, especially if there were power tools involved, even though they were at the town park to work. The girl scouts weren't gon na. Let an opportunity to do some fundraising pass them by they set up a stand to sell cookies and one of their first customers was mom. So i guess she changed her mind about people selling stuff to volunteers. I was glad the girl scouts were running the show, but they were working us hard after an hour of raking. I was worn out and wanted to go home, but it was clear they weren't, letting anyone go until the last leaf was bagged. Another person in my group who seemed a little worn out was my homework buddy through other people figured out how smart through is and a bunch of grown-ups started bugging him for stuff they'd, usually get from their phones, fro, how's the stock market trending through. What'S the weather forecast for this weekend through, have any cats done anything amusing? Today, i noticed that every half hour the girl scouts rotated from group to group. So during a changing of the guard, i saw my opportunity and took it. I knew exactly where i was headed to the creek when i was on the swim team in first grade, dad used to drop me off at the town pool every day, but the minute he drove away i'd run down to the creek and catch minnows until practice Was over i'd always make sure i got back to the pool before dad came to pick me up and i jump in at the last second. So it looked like i'd been swimming the whole time, but once dad came early to watch me practice and i guess i got carried away catching minnows, so i ended up getting to the pool after dad and i got busted today. I figured i'd just take a quick breather down by the creek and then get back to work, but 30 seconds after i got there. I heard somebody crashing through the bushes. It turns out. Froo had seen me take off from the playground and he followed me through said he couldn't handle all the pestering from the grown-ups a second longer and when he saw me leave he thought i had the right idea. While we were talking, we heard something big coming. Our way, i thought it might be a bear, but i was pretty shocked to see that it was one of the community service guys. In fact, i knew this guy. His name was billy rottner and he used to hang out in our basement when rodrik's band practiced a month or so ago. I heard roderick telling one of his friends that billy got caught stealing a pack of sour gummy worms at the convenience store. I really wasn't happy this guy had followed me to my hiding spot. I told billy. He should go back to the park before he got us all in trouble, but billy said he was making a run for it and was never going back to community service. Then billy started blubbering about how, when he was little, his mom bought a pack of sour gummy worms for him and his brother to share, but his brother wouldn't give him a single worm and ate the whole pack. Billy said, the only reason he stole from the convenience store was so he could finally have a pack of sour gummy worms all to himself. I was getting really uncomfortable. Listening to this guy go on and on, and i was hoping froo would help me talk. Some sense into him, but then through started with a speech of his own frue, started talking about how his parents make him get up at five o'clock in the morning six days a week to study for the geography bee and how he's never gotten to play. Laser tag because his parents say it's a waste of time. This was all getting to be a little much for me and i decided i'd rather be raking leaves than listening to these guys tell their sob stories. So i started heading back to the playground, but all of a sudden that brownie appeared out of nowhere and totally caught me off guard hey you. What are you up to my instincts kicked in and i ran froo and billy saw me take off and they were right on my heels, but the brownie was carrying a whistle and the next thing i knew the whole girl scout troop was in hot pursuit. I started to run faster when i realized me and through might get in serious trouble for harboring a fugitive. I didn't know if the girl scouts actually had the authority to arrest anyone, but i wasn't gon na stick around to find out for all. I knew that was something they needed to do to earn one of their badges once the chase was on. Billy took the lead and me, and through just followed him, it was pretty obvious. He'D had experience with this kind of thing because he seemed to know what he was doing after a while. We were able to put some distance between ourselves and the girl scouts and we could barely hear the whistle. So we stopped for a minute to catch our breath. Billy said we were gon na need our energy to stay ahead of the girl scouts. Then he took out a few rolls of thin mints that were tucked away in his jumpsuit and split them up between us. I'M just gon na assume he paid for those cookies because if he didn't, i don't want to know after we fueled up on cookies. Billy said we should all ditch our clothes, because if they used dogs to track us, we could throw them off our trail. Then it dawned on me that if this guy couldn't get away with stealing a pack of sour gummy worms, he was probably the last person i should be taking this kind of advice from. I realized i'd made a huge mistake and started looking for a way out of the situation, so i told the guys we should split up saying if we did we'd be harder to catch, but through said we should stick together. He said we could travel around the country and have crazy adventures and maybe even join the circus somewhere along the way billy seemed to like that idea too. Then, the two of them started arguing over who should get the money for the movie rights to our story. If we ever became famous, i decided to use the opportunity to try and slip away, but when i turned to leave a group of vans appeared out of nowhere. Mom was in the lead van and the girl scouts were in the vehicles right behind her. There was a second there when i thought froo might try to make a last-ditch attempt to escape, but after all his big talk about life on the run he totally fell to pieces. I thought mom would be really mad, but she seemed relieved she wanted to know what i was thinking running away like that i figured billy was going down no matter what and there was no use in all three of us getting in trouble. So i pinned the whole thing on him. I guess i feel a little bad, but to be fair stealing the thin mints was his idea. I don't know how much community service they're going to tack on to billy's sentence, but by the time he's done. I plan to be attending a college halfway across the country. The craziest thing of all was the way mom found us in the first place when she got that gps chip for the pig she got one for me too, so i've been walking around with one of those things attached to my shoelace for the past two months. Without even knowing it and when i disappeared from the park, mom used her phone to figure out where i was now's, not the time to complain about mom being overprotective, though, because if she hadn't come to my rescue, i might have ended up in a traveling circus. With froo and billy, but still so much for mom going electronics free october friday, if dad was on my case before he's a hundred times worse now after the town park incident last weekend, it's pretty obvious. He thinks i can't be trusted and whenever he's home he likes to have me and grandpa in the same room, so he can keep an eye on both of us. I wish i never knew about the webcam, though, because it's got me really paranoid. There could actually be multiple cameras in the house, i'm pretty sure there's one in many stuffed duck because it's eyes seem to follow me. If there's not a camera in there, then i've been making a pretty big fool out of myself the past few days in front of that duck. Luckily, mom took dad to the airport to go on a business trip this morning, and i know he can't monitor me. The whole time he's away still i've been extra, careful not to screw up just in case he's got one of those webcams recording to a hard drive somewhere. This morning, when i was brushing my teeth, i made sure to put the toothpaste cap back on the tube. The way dad always tells me, but my fingers were slippery and i dropped the cap in the sink it bounced around a few times. Then it went right down the drain oops. I knew the second dad got home from his trip. He'D go to the upstairs bathroom to make sure the cap was on the toothpaste, so i had to get it back. The first thing i did was try and fish the cap out of the drain with a cotton swab, but all i managed to pull up was a bunch of hair and other gunk, and now that i know what's in people's sinks, i guarantee you i'll. Never be a plumber, i figured i probably pushed the toothpaste cap even farther down the drain with that cotton swab. So i opened the cabinet under the sink to see. If i could figure out where it ended up. I knew dad had a bunch of do-it-yourself books on plumbing in the basement and i figured there'd be some step-by-step instructions to show exactly how to fix this sort of thing. I couldn't make heads or tails of the diagrams in the book, so i took my best shot at it. There was a plastic tube underneath the sink and i figured the toothpaste cap must be somewhere inside. So i loosened the nut that held the tube to the metal pipe and the tube came out pretty easily. I guess i was supposed to turn off a valve or something, though, because the next thing i knew water was spraying out all over the place. Ah, it took me a minute to figure out how to shut off the valve and by the time i did there was a huge puddle on the floor. I soaked up as much water as i could with the towels that were in the bathroom, then i ran down the stairs to get some more out of the laundry room, but when i got down to the kitchen i realized i had a bigger problem. Water was dripping from the ceiling onto the kitchen table. I told grandpa where the water was coming from, but he didn't seem too concerned. He said the only real damage would be a water stain on the kitchen ceiling. I'M glad grandpa thought it was no big deal, but i'm sure dad would see the situation differently. I begged grandpa to help me out of this mess and he told me he would grandpa said: there's a special kind of paint that covers up water, stains and he'd. Take me to the hardware store to get it that sounded great. He grabbed dad's keys and we got in the car, but when we backed out of the driveway grandpa clipped a trash, can i wasn't too concerned, but when we hit a neighbor's mailbox, i started to get worried. I realized i couldn't remember the last time i was in a car with grandpa at the wheel and all of a sudden it hit me last year, grandpa failed his driver's test, so they took away his license. He hadn't been allowed to drive, since i was really nervous, so i told grandpa. Maybe we should go back home, but now that he was on the open road, there was no turning back. He was hollering yeah. By the time we got out of our neighborhood. He seemed to be getting the hang of it, but i was still pretty nervous when we got on the ramp for the highway. Luckily, there weren't a lot of people driving at that time of day, and the hardware store was only a few miles away. The weird thing was all of the signs along the side of the road were facing the wrong way, which was really confusing.